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If the trees are alive and I am alive, if the trees are blazing and the seagull — flying between the grass and sun — makes a shadow, if the sky startles me, if my soul is listening, waiting for something to fly from the bony cage of my hands — then how can it…

for Jeffrey You have become the ocean for me now. No body of water, but your body, open over miles and miles of longing. No wave, no sweet sweep of release, but the pitch and thrust of urgency unbroken. No sound of sea or season, but for your voice, deep and full of a promise…

Aged a lot during our talk (you were gone). Left and wandered the streets for some hours— melodramatic, I know— poor, crucified by my teeth. And yet, how we talked for a while. All those things we had wanted to say for so long, yes—I sat happily nodding my head in agreement, but you were…

Mine began in the first grade When Michael Burke stole my Blue ballpoint pen. I didn't Like Michael Burke before he Stole my ballpoint, and I Liked him even less after. He was loud, selfish, coarse, Pushy, overweight, and ugly. I knew because I sat to His right in back of the class And watched…

Bach must have known how something flutters away when you turn to face the face you caught sideways in a mirror in a hall at dusk and how the smell of apples in a bowl can stop the heart from beating, for an instant, between sink and stove in the dead of winter when stars…

In the evening the couples came down from the hotel. It was summer and just past sunset. They walked along the river, the women in long dresses, the men in light-colored suits, while on the patio a boy played Scarlatti on the piano. The couples stood at the edge of the water and breathed deeply…

There is no sleep                 in the stillness of snow, in such                 an adoration                                       of freefall. Like a choir's           single inhalation, it seems to pause      between two songs. Sleep slips by me           in waiting for the sound.      Outside as in the laying down                            of walls, everywhere the snow      like…

But what of those things we left In closets: pants and shirts too small; Notebooks filled with deliberate, looped Script; tedious games we were proud To admit we loved? As a child I loved Everything! On the back porch, housed Beneath a table, I sang the same song Over and over until my voice gave…

The Burbank evening hugs the little jet. Commuters, standing on the rubber-padded stairs, look inside the engines and feel comforted, see how sensual, full-lipped they are, the metal daisies in each one, then open the starved briefcases on their laps and study graphs of annual reports . . . You're traveling alone, crying, trying to…